Meet the Man Behind the Mic

April 4, 2008

by Michael Tucker

Every surface is covered in band stickers and concert flyers. Any open space is filled with marker writing that is either hilariously witty or downright obscene, sometimes both. Shelves holding thousands of vinyls and CDs are used to hold crates filled with more CDs. The couches are worn, their cushions pressed thin and their frayed arms covered in duct tape. There is a gentle hum coming from the machinery, complimenting the music pouring from gigantic speakers hanging from the cieling. A yellow sign declares, “No Smoking. Smoking has set off fire alarms in the radio station before.” It’s a lot quieter than I remembered, and surely less crowded. That’s how Andrew McCallister runs the show.

I am glad to be back in the third floor of Curtis Hall, the building from which Tufts’ free-form radio is broadcasted. The last time I was here, the ground was littered with beer cans and the air filled with a haze of smoke. The fire alarm went off and TUPD came. We ran down the stairs and scattered off into the abyss that is any 3 a.m. Tufts night. My friend lost his radio show, and now the only remnants from that night are the yellow no-smoking signs.


“Do you ever party in here?” I ask Andrew, the DJ behind the desk. “No,” he responds with a firmness that makes me feel fratty for asking the question. He tinkers with knobs and buttons and meters, all of which look terribly cool and equally as confusing.


Like any good journalist, I proceed with a follow-up question, “Never?” I secretly hope Andrew was joking when he answered “no” before, that he would pull out from underneath his desk a pack of smokes and a bottle of booze. He looks up from his board of gadgets. “Not really, I just play music.”


I sat on the couch adjacent to the DJ’s desk. Usually when I interview someone, the person indulges me with their undivided attention. Andrew doesn’t give way to my narcissism; he searches through piles of CDs to find what he is going to play next.


No stranger to the DJ’s chair, Andrew has been hosting radio shows for seven years. He got his start in high school, and is glad to continue broadcasting all that he deems ear-worthy, although he admits his show doesn’t have that many listeners.


“About 20 people listen consistently,” he says to me. “My grandma listened once, for 20 minutes, then called me to tell me how much she hated my music.”


“What kind of music do you play?” I ask him. He responds with an answer I assumed to be alien to a DJ, a person whose job it is to sift through the muck and mud of the musical world and select what he or she deems to be good tunes. “Everything,” he says.


“A little bit of rock, celtic, rap, world, heavy metal, hard rock,” he says looking through his play list. I cringe when he cites My Chemical Romance as a heavy metal band, but nod approvingly when he mentions Metallica. Before I have a chance to scold him, he backtracks and admits that My Chemical Romance is not heavy metal.


We wax musical as he flips switches and continues to press buttons. Moving from an insturmental, ambient track to a rap song, he lets me pick the mandatory public service announcement that he must read hourly. I choose a fear-mongering ditty about domestic gun crime, which Andrew glibly reads with charismatic sarcasm.


Then I realize what Andrew is about.He doesn’t host a radio show so he can have his friends hang out at the station. He doesn’t pander to Tufts music taste by looping Daft Punk and Guster. He surely could care less about a journalist interviewing him.


Andrew hosts his radio show simply to get his music out.


“Sure, I play what they want to hear and I take requests,” he tells me after somewhat sheepishly admitting that his girlfriend ocassionally calls into the show and dedicates songs to him.


He then unknowingly offers why he is willing to spend his Saturday nights in a hot room, alone, behind a microphone. “I try to play what they want to hear, but mostly what I think they should hear.”


I’ll be listening, and you should too.

Andrew McCallister’s show airs every Saturday night, 11p.m. until 1a.m., on 91.5FM WMFO.